Collating and binding systems for saddle stitchers are, of course, well known in the printing industry for mass producing booklets, magazines, catalogues, advertising brochures and the like. Typically, one or more sharply folded and generally pre-printed blanks or signatures are sequentially fed by a number of spaced signature feeders. The signatures are delivered such that the folded margins or spines of the signatures come to rest upon a collating conveyor line or chain which travels past the signature feeders. The conveyor gathers the signatures, one on top of the other, and moves them, through one or more on-line printing stations, to a stitching or binding station. The assembled signatures then are usually diverted to a trimming station and further led to a labeling station where mailing labels which are pre-printed or printed on-line are affixed.
Prior art systems of this type contemplate the computer controlled production of various demographic editions of books or catalogues of internal and external signatures containing individually tailored information or customized printing on selected signatures. This flexibility is important in satisfying the demands of a particular market or geographical destination. For instance, it may be desirable to offer certain customers or subscribers various features or selected advertising depending upon their special interest, income or occupation. Likewise, it may be relevant to customize products or services contingent upon a customer's previous buying history. For example, a publication may issue one demo edition for parents of newborn children who have purchased baby products, another edition for farmers interested in the latest milking machines and still another edition for fitness buffs who have ordered exercise equipment. In each situation, it is important to realize that a publisher may save significant postal costs by presorting these demographic editions. In postal terms, this means the combining of demographic editions into a singular mailstream to maximize five digit and carrier route sortings.
To provide these demographic versions, the prior art commonly employs an information source which indicates the special interest of each subscriber within a common postal locale. Based on the information source, a controller selectively actuates the signature feeders to deliver certain signatures upon the conveyor to form one or more editions of a booklet or magazine for each subscriber within the zip code area. Each new zip code area is accompanied by a new sequence demand.
One system which discloses the demographic binding of signatures is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,899,165 issued on Aug. 12, 1975 to Abram et al. In this arrangement, each signature feeder is actuated under control of coding on optically scanned mailing labels carried on a tape located adjacent the labeling station. The efficiency of this system is dependent upon the conveyance of the label in synchronism with the conveyor in order that the correct label is placed on the cover signature of the booklet produced by the coding on the label. In addition, this arrangement includes a replacement book feeder which supplies a standard replacement book in the line upon detection of a malfunction. While this prevents a loss in synchronism between the gathered signatures and the information source controlling feeding of the signatures, the subscriber affected will not receive the demographic edition originally programmed.
Another collating system in which a tape is employed to determine the construction of booklets is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,778,167 issued Oct. 18, 1988 to Snow et al. In this design, detection of a malfunction will cause a booklet of a particular version to be reordered, but there is no guarantee that the reordered book will be properly bundled with booklets in the same zip code. As a result, a publisher may incur further postal expenditures due to the creation of these maverick or stray booklets relative to the remainder of booklets in the same geographic grouping.
A further demographic binding machine utilizing a coded address label to determine book make-up is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,022,455 issued May 10, 1977 to Newsome et al. In this machine, a plurality of parallel conveyor belts are used as storage stations between signature feeders and the labelling table to hold various editions of magazines on call. While the provision of the storage stations may improve the availability of demographic editions of prior art systems, it adds a substantial additional expense by virtue of its extra conveyors, and attendant vanes, solenoids and delay devices utilized therewith.
From the foregoing, it can be seen that various attempts have been made by the prior art to upgrade the assembly of signatures in a demographic binding operation. However, there remains a need in this well developed art for a system which offers more efficient handling of signatures and bundling of magazines with optimized postal discounts.